Richard Dougherty wrote:
My question is a simple one, I think: regardless of the facts of this case, do you think it is unconstitutional to teach the Declaration of Independence -- that is, not as a historical document, but as if it were true, and that it is legitimate to tell students that it is true? The problem, of course, is with the multiple references to God in the document. Is it a violation of the First Amendment, say, to tell students that many (some?) of the colonists thought that God was the source of our rights, and that they were right about that? Or do we avoid First Amendment problems only by saying that many of them perhaps thought that God was the source of our rights, but then abstain from making any suggestions about whether that is in fact right?
I think we certainly should teach that those who wrote the Declaration believed that rights were something we were endowed with by a creator. To teach anything else would be a lie. But no, I do not think that a teacher should then go on to say, "And they were right about that". To do that is to endorse a religious position. It is also a statement that we can't really know is true or not, as opposed to the historical question of what they believed to be true, which we can give a solid empirical answer to.
And I'd go a step further than that and say that if teachers are going to discuss the religious views of the men who wrote the Declaration in any detail, they should make it clear that what there were major differences among them regarding the nature of the Creator, because that too is true and verifiable. One of the problems that is quite common in discussion of the founding fathers in general, and especially in this area, is that of oversimplification. To pretend that they all meant the same thing by "creator" or "nature's god" is, again, to teach something that simply isn't true. Jefferson's conception of God differed wildly from Patrick Henry's, which differed from Ben Franklin's, which differed from George Washington's. Most people see the broadly deistic language in the Declaration and, because they haven't read anything further about the founders' views, presume that it refers to the Christian God. But for many of the founders, it clearly did not (though for most, I think it did). Again, we should teach what is true and verifiable, which is that the fight for independence and the founding of America was achieved by a mixture of orthodox Christians and Enlightenment-inspired deists and unitarians who often disagreed greatly on religious matters (and on other matters, of course). Hence, most historical scholars view the language in the Declaration to be a sort of "lowest common denominator" reference, one which could satisfy both sides in this sometimes-tense compromise.
More later when I return home.
Ed Brayton _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw
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